T
he trouble with Fribble and his crew is that their discs tend to be on the pricey side and, lately, on the noisy side. Of course, in space nobody can hear you scream “I can’t believe I paid $18 for this piece of kCrap!” and if I learned nothing else from THRaKaTTaK it was to caveat empty myself of any preconceived notion of what a Crimson album might sound like at this late hour. In my original notes (which are usually chocked full of deep insights such as “very good” or “has a jazzy feel”), I wrote this music was “like disaggregated black notes stuck in a tar pit struggling to free themselves and take their rightful place on the page,” though I’ve been working “disaggregated” into my sentences too much lately (“There among the disaggregated donuts, the chocolate one, that’s the one I would like”). Of course, the original, original notes read more like “sucks,” “sucks even more,” “apparently that last song was a gentle kiss because this is what sucking really feels like,” etc. Took about half a dozen tries before I began to see some method in the madness. However, I thought I’d do a sanity check anyway and it turns out the people on Amazon liked it, although they liked the first disc more than the second disc which, since I’m pretty sure they sound identical, confirms my impression that exploratory space lounge music is interesting for forty minutes but tiresome for ninety. Then I read the review on All Music Guide, which was complimentary and nicely done, so I looked up the author and it turned out she was a published poet, which was kinda cool until I noticed that the poetry site she was featured on had a line under the masthead that read “The future will be gorgeous and reckless, and words, those luminous charms, will set us free again,” and I couldn’t help thinking how much better it would have been if they had replaced the words “will set us free again” with “will punch us in the vaginas like angry dwarves.” So it turns out that I’m not the only one who has developed a soft spot for Space Groove after repeated beatings listenings. (You know, I’m eating mixed nuts at the moment, and it clearly says “Less than 50% peanuts,” but I’m thinking maybe that just means the peanuts they use are in the bottom 50% quality-wise and that those brazil-nut hoarding bastards at Emerald have sold me a container of mostly inferior-quality peanuts along with whatever cashews and almonds rolled off the sorting belt.) The origins for the ProjeKCt Two encounter had me confused originally. King Crimson wanted to form offshoots of itself (gotcha), so Fripp and Belew and Gunn got together in the studio (okay), where Belew unpacks a new Roland V drum set (huh?) and ends up jamming on drums with Fripp (guitar, natch) and Gunn (touch guitar and guitar synthesizer) for a completely new configuration in two senses. Years of playing together pay off, as the trio is able to shape something out of chaos. It’s definitely out there; Belew is not a conventional drummer and really puts the Roland through its paces by sampling a whole host of sounds, Gunn likewise relishes a different role and Fripp is Fripp. Space Groove is no match for the proper Crimson albums and surely was never intended to be, but it is more interesting than some of the “legitimate” instrumental albums from Fripp and Belew. I would almost recommend this just for the liner notes from Adrian Belew, which describe the music as a story, something I always felt was a most suitable challenge for music criticism.

TRACK LISTING

Disc One

SPACE GROOVE II

SPACE GROOVE III

SPACE GROOVE I

Disc Two

HAPPY HOUR ON PLANET ZARG

IS THERE LIFE ON ZARG?

LOW LIFE IN SECTOR Q-3

SECTOR SHIFT

LAURA IN SPACE

SECTOR DRIFT

SECTOR PATROL

IN SPACE THERE IS NO NORTH, IN SPACE THERE IS NO SOUTH, IN SPACE THERE IS NO EAST, IN SPACE THERE IS NO WEST